I am getting horrendous colour shifts when saving to a jpg in photoshop. It looks OK in photoshop when I open it, but when viewed anywhere else it is brutal. I included screenshots of my colour settings and I am working to sRGB and embedding that profile when I save, so I am at a loss as to why it shifted so much.

Just a reminder, gator soup, but you're still using the wrong terminology. It doesn't help people to begin to understand color-management concepts if you tell them things that aren't accurate. Ps is ABSOLUTELY NOT converting a Document Profile to a monitor profile. No profile is being converted! It is transforming the colors per the profiles for the document and monitor.

You got pissy last time I reminded you of this, but if you're going to advise people on color-management issues and you refuse to get the terminology right I'm going to keep bringing it up. There's enough confusion in the world on this subject as it is.

Noel, if you are trying to argue Ps (CMS) does not "read" an embedded profile and "Convert" it to the monitor profile (and/or using that basic terminology in my writings is somehow confusing) then i beg to differ with you

i don't see much point in discussing this further with you again except to add — "transforming the colors per the profiles for the document and monitor" — doesn't put any picture in my head to visualize the concept

of course, i may not have benefit of the wonderful technical background and high intellect you appear to have, but (excuse that) i certainly wouldn't hold that against you for attempting to articulate your explanation with terminology you feel is correct or otherwise useful

What are you referring to when you mention "anywhere else"? Programs outside of Photoshop may or may not recognize ICC profiles. In the past this wasn't as noticeable because people had monitors with output somewhat close to the sRGB color space to begin with. Newer monitors, and in particular wide gamut monitors, tend to have larger color spaces for more vibrant displays. In this case if you adjusted the colors to your liking in Photoshop, they'll likely appear over-saturated in non-color managed applications.

This would seem easily proven by taking a screen grab of the open Photoshop document and opening the screen shot in Photoshop because Assigning the monitor profile is the only profile that restores the original 'true color.'

+++++

I can see how this could be confusing to someone who sets his wide gamut monitor to its sRGB preset, and doesn't profile it (he is using sRGB as his default OS monitor profile), and then sets his Photoshop Working RGB to sRGB.

But it is what I am observing here on my hardware-calibrated displays.

I understand from the way your statement is worded that the profile embedded in the image itself is physically changed ("converted") to match the monitor profile of the user (who saves the image?).

I am one of the many who don't completely understand all this color management business. Even so, that doesn't sound right because it would seem to me that different versions of the image (with regard to the document profile) would end up circulating, resulting in chaos.

Noel's wording makes more sense to me, despite the word "transforming" which I find akin to "converting".

Would it be right to say "Photoshop is interpreting the colors per the profiles for the document and the monitor."?

The term "transforming" is indeed akin to Photoshop's term "converting", as it implies changing the R, G, B numbers. The color management industry standard term is "transform", while Adobe chose to use "convert" for one of the pair of functions given to manipulate document color spaces. It's best to stay away from using the term "convert" when describing device output because it implies document-document functions in Photoshop that have nothing to do with preparing RGB numbers for display.

Literally:

A document carries (or is given) a profile that unambiguously describes what the RGB numbers of its pixels mean in terms of colors in the real world. The document can be said to be in the color space defined by its profile.

A device (monitor) has associated with it (by the OS) a profile that unambiguously describes what colors you will see in the real world if you give it particular RGB numbers. The monitor can be said to display in the color space defined by its profile.

Color management software reads the document profile and the device profile, and creates a transform, which is essentially an optimized math equation that allows document RGB numbers to be fed in one end and monitor RGB numbers to be read out the other.

When used for output, the transform is employed pixel by pixel (very quickly) to provide RGB numbers to the device that will cause it to show the colors intended by the RGB numbers in the document.

It's really as simple as that, though the devil is in the details, and in the fact that not every application does it right, does it completely, or does it at all, nor is every profile perfectly constructed and accurate.

My point here isn't that you do not understand how it works, gator soup - clearly you have a working knowledge that works for you with your own setup - but that if you intend to teach others you really do need to use the right and complete terminology or you risk confusing them. It is also not useful to try to guide others to do exactly what you do, because it's not necessarily right for them.

gator soup wrote:

I can see how this could be confusing to someone who sets his wide gamut monitor to its sRGB preset, and doesn't profile it (he is using sRGB as his default OS monitor profile), and then sets his Photoshop Working RGB to sRGB.

If this is intended to be some kind of dig against me and the choices I've made for my own color-management, it's both inaccurate and shows a certain amount of ignorance on your part, as what you have described is a perfectly valid and reasonable way of working, and actually comes with some benefits.

Didn't anyone take the trouble to open the OP's Word doc and see what he thinks is horrendous?

I opened it in Word 2011 for Mac and after waiting ten minutes for the third page to load, I decided it was blank.

The two images he shows, one he says is Photoshop and one he says is Save For Web although he does not say what app is viewing it, are only slightly different and the difference appears to be gamma. His setup, what ever it is, must be uncalibrated.

Color-management is not a system-wide thing - every application has to do it. Seeing different color in the displays of the same image by applications that do implement color-management vs. those that don't (or those that do it wrong) is to be expected. It would thus be appropriate to discuss exactly what you're seeing in exactly what applications, supported by screen grab images. Not every application does color-management, and not every one that does claim to do it does it completely or correctly.

It's pretty much futile to try to discover a proper color-management workflow by "futzing around" without learning the concepts and specifics. You really do have to gain an understanding of color-management in order to choose the proper settings and make the right choices and to provide the proper image files to others. There are good reasons for all of the settings/choices, and only you can decide what's right for what YOU need. Once you get it right, it does not add a lot of steps nor get in your way.

It's practically impossible to gain an understanding of color-management one post at a time on a forum, especially from terse responses. We've seen it tried again and again and it always fails, with the discussions often turning hostile.

Seek out multiple references for color-management information while studying it, and verify "facts". Bear in mind that a lot of people who write on the Internet will try to tell you what to do and not all of them are providing correct information. The more emphatically they present their message the more you should doubt what they say, especially if it's presented as "just do this" without reasoning behind it. It seems to be a subject where those who have just enough knowledge to be dangerous try to teach it, and those who think they know it often become arrogant.

Don't become discouraged. It seems complex at first, couched in strange terms, but if you can understand how to use Photoshop you can understand how to do proper color-management. Once it makes sense you'll be able to make the proper choices and you'll understand what you see.

None taken, Gary, and thank you for your thoughts, though you appear to have missed the point... I spend my time here trying to help others, trying to improve myself, and learning more in the process. I'm sorry that you appear to have taken my intended constructive criticism - intended to help you communicate your considerable practical knowledge of color-management to others - the wrong way.

Regarding spending time on pertinent things... If you'd like to continue a technical conversation on the subjects at hand, I'm game.

The OP, who obviously does not understand anything about color management, never specified his operating system or the browsers he used, and never posted a screen shot of the "horrendous" differences. What is the point of trying to help someone like that? We don't know anything useful. Pages of philosophy have not contributed anything to resolving the original self imposed problem.

I posted a link to a word document with both screen shots from my TIFF file and the JPG file I was getting, but perhaps that was missed

Thank you Lundberg02 for speaking down to me. After all, I did ask to be spoken to like a 10 year old, so I guess if you speak to your kids like that, then I certainly deserved the same.

To answer your questions:

The jpg looks the same in Internet Explorer 8 and in Firefox.

My operating system is Windows XP, which I know, because I don't use Mac I'm not worthy and all that..

I would have been happy to answer any questions one had to get further clarification; all one needed to do is ask. I didn't realize the degree of specs that were needed to diagnose the issue. As I tell my own kids, 'its not a stupid question, after all, you don't know what you don't know.'

It looks the same in IE8 and Firefox because you have not enabled color management in FF (about:config).

Yes you asked to be talked to like a 10 year old, but I told you what's what as though you were a freshman in a college math class who didn't have the prerequisites. Google g ballard and learn something about color management and you will be able to solve your own problems without the pontificating.

So, going forward, does this really need to be my workflow in order to save any jpgs from my PSD or TIFF files? To me it certainly seems convoluted

"

Thanks for the additional info. As already mentioned the browsers you're using are most likely non-color managed (or not configured to be color managed), which explains why this workflow appears to fix the problem (this workflow will make the color look correct on your own monitor, but may be considerably off for others viewing the image on the web through different monitors). Color Management is a contentious subject because it's a non-intuive, behind-the-scenes area of Photoshop that involves a lot of moving parts. Your OS, Graphics Card, Monitor, Applications, Output Device (Driver), and inidividual document all affect the way color is reproduced or displayed, and any or a combination of these could be the source of the problem.

If you regularly output to both print and the web you might want to consider learning more about the whole system of color management as others suggested. A great book I would recommend is Real World Color Management by Bruce Fraser, Chris Murphy, and Fred Bunting. It's elegantly and intelligently written, and gives a bit of insight on why there's often "attitude" involved with color management.

The rest of the comments by others are worth paying attention to. It would likely take more debugging to find the exact problem, unless enabling color management in Firefox works.

Thank you for the link and book suggestion. It would certainly be nice to just identify one basic workflow and run with it, but it just seems that there are far too many moving parts that could influence anything.

My goal was to try to get a somewhat decent looking representative jpg for my website so that viewers would have a proper expectation of the image. But with so many different viewers, browsers, monitors, video cards, etc all making their own interpretation, then its safe to say its somewhat of a losing cause.

Still, I will check out the link and the book. Thank you to all for the helpful contributions.

If you have a calibrated monitor, and I don't think you actually do, and you get your sRGB jpg to your satisfaction in Photoshop, you have done everything a web designer can do. Your statistically likely viewer will not have a calibrated monitor or a sufficiently color managed browser. You could suggest that your site be viewed in Safari or color managed Firefox.

It's true that web output is kind of a crap shoot because you can't control anything device-wise on the user's end. The traditional method was to convert the image to sRGB when saving for web. Then, even if the document was saved as an untagged format, the colors would show up somewhat close to the original for standard monitors with unmanaged applications (standard monitors used to have output somewhat close to sRGB, which is part of why sRGB is closely associated with web output and Save For Web). It's worth noting that most Operating Systems, when they have no monitor profile to work with, will default to a transform similar or identical to an sRGB space, which will look incorrect for a wide gamut monitor. You might want to check out what your OS is reading as the monitor profile.

I'd be curious to find out if Windows XP is playing any part in this. The combination of a fairly new monitor with a really old OS might be having an effect. XP is a solid OS, but I don't know the status of its support for newer displays and how it interacts with color management on them, including the possibility of outdated graphics drivers for XP that might not correctly support a newer monitor.

Some monitors also come with pre-calibrated profiles that can be installed on the OS (often not as good as calibrating your own profiles for the individual monitor, but better than no calibration at all, which would default to assigning an sRGB-ish transform to the monitor), or if they don't come with the monitor they're sometimes available on the manufacturer website.

Note that the above comments are strictly in reference to the OS talking to the monitor about color data.

Funny that you should mention that, Lundberg. I'd just like to point out to gator soup (Gary Ballard) that my browsing experience with the above site using Internet Explorer is optimal. You'll just have to trust that my monitors are calibrated to display sRGB accurately.

This screen was grabbed, assigned the sRGB profile, and saved. I don't know what the heck this forum software is going to do to it though.

The term "transforming" is indeed akin to Photoshop's term "converting"

"Akin"? I'd say they're functional equivalents, therefore synonyms.

synonym |ˈsinəˌnim|

noun

• a word or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word or phrase in the same language, for example shut is a synonym of close.

• a person or thing so closely associated with a particular quality or idea that the mention of their name calls it to mind : the Victorian age is a synonym for sexual puritanism.

Whereas Photoshop has the two distinct menu commands of CONVERT to profile, and ASSIGN a profile, I find it entirely appropriate and indeed useful to use CONVERT in this context when answering a post in the Adobe Photoshop forum, or on gator soup's web site.

Converting to a profile means to transform the numbers in order to preserve the colors (as closely as possible) when taken to another color space. Assigning a profile means to preserve the numbers, and this results in a transformation of the colors as displayed in a different color space.

You write: The color management industry standard term is "transform". My knowledge of prepress and CMYK printing is nowhere as strong as gator soup's, so I have relied on my recently acquired copy of "The Official Adobe Print Publishing Guide" (Adobe Press, San Jose, California. ISBN 1-56830-468-4), a fourteen-year-old publication once highly regarded in the field, and off the top of my head I don't recall any reference in it to "transforming" in relation to colors, color spaces or profiles. There are no entries in the index for transform, transformation, or transforming. There are, on the other hand, several pertinent entries for Converting.

I do not dispute that you feel the standard form is transform.

I'm fully aware that the meaning of the process is not at issue here and that you're just arguing about the use of one word. I just happen to think that it is an important word, and the use of Convert should not be discouraged or criticized, but, rather, promoted in these forums and elsewhere on the web.

Actually, I was more pointing out that the profile is most certainly not being converted, the colors are. Read Gary's first response in this thread carefully. The omission of the words necessary to express that fact clearly is what made me feel the need to post.

My preference for using "transform" over "convert" is a secondary issue, and comes strictly from an aversion to using a term that implies an operation that's selectable from within Photoshop's menus, which can only serve to confuse the issue.

It's entirely possible that the industry has refined its use of terms in the past decades of development. My choice of terminology comes from working documentation for color management software implementation. May I suggest a search for the word "transform" here:

Actually, I was more pointing out that the profile is most certainly not being converted…

I totally overlooked that. gator soup did indeed write "Ps is Converting the Document Profile (sRGB) to your monitor profile" and left it open to a misunderstanding. Actually what is being converted is neither the profile embedded in the file or assigned by the application to an untagged file nor the colors per se (heaven forbid!), but the numbers representing the individual colors in each profile—from one profile to another one.

I missed that nuance in post #1 and then misconstrued your post as objecting to the use of convert.

Perfect example of frontotemporal lobar brain damage at work.

My most abject apologies to all readers of this thread.

Noel Carboni wrote:

…should realize that the careful and proper use of language is key to learning…

No problem at all, R, though I am left to wonder whether perhaps Gary missed that thrust of my response too. I thought I was clear, but...

I need to stress that I only had/have the best intentions here - I would like to think I can help everyone to whom I respond learn to do things a little better, and I don't think there's a rule that says all responses must be directed at the original poster.

I added a clause about "getting pissy" that I shouldn't have, because Gary's response last time bothered me, and for that I'm sorry. It led to another defensive response, which further led this thread astray.

None of us is perfect, and each of us should strive to be willing to accept constructive criticism without going off. I will try to be all the more respectful.

No hard feelings toward anyone.

-Noel

P.S.,

station_two wrote:

Actually what is being converted is neither the profile embedded in the file or assigned by the application to an untagged file nor the colors per se (heaven forbid!), but the numbers representing the individual colors in each profile—from one profile to another one.

Whereas Photoshop has the two distinct menu commands of CONVERT to profile, and ASSIGN a profile, I find it entirely appropriate and indeed useful to use CONVERT in this context when answering a post in the Adobe Photoshop forum, or on gator soup's web site.

my thoughts exactly

whether the "transformation" happens via a color management system on a profile-to-profile level is certainly arguable as i pointed out in post 6 — the end effect is the same:

Source Profile> Monitor Profile:

This would seem easily proven by taking a screen grab of the open Photoshop document and opening the screen shot in Photoshop because Assigning the monitor profile is the only profile that restores the original 'true color.'

+++++++

with little or no formal Photoshop training, I do not write for Adobe (or anyone else) nor do i have benefit of any expert review committees before posting my lay articles (this is disclaimed on my website and likely here in the Adobe user agreement)

color.org is a great technical resource though i still prefer the simpler writing style of Bruce Fraser — a genius mentality with an inspiring personality, and a writer who turns pictures in my mind (not an easy task)!

The problem I see with using the term "convert" - and I admit to be splitting hairs - is that doing an Edit > Convert to Profile in Photoshop changes not only the RGB values in the image but also the profile that describes the document. This could be confusing to a new person who's trying to understand this stuff for the first time. Or maybe not - I could be just being overly picky.

But that's not the point.

Please understand that if all you did was write "Ps is Converting the RGB values from your Document per its Profile (sRGB) to RGB values suitable for your monitor per its profile" this would never have come up. You CANNOT say "Ps is Converting the Document Profile (sRGB) to your monitor profile" and have anyone outside of someone who already intimately knows color-management understand what you mean.

I was only trying to help you get your points across better, Gary. With post number 2 I may not have worded it as clearly as I should have, but I certainly did not to discredit you in any way or question your practical knowledge of color-management. That said, I don't appreciate your ad hominem responses. I dare say I know color-management and Photoshop as well as you do.

An appropriate response (as it would have been in post 4) would be "thanks, I'll strive to be more complete and accurate in my wording next time".